Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

Lying under the covers as the rain ticked against the windows, he thought about Earl’s question. In every single drop on the glass he could see the incrementally rotated orb of the solitary streetlight that was shining down from the post across the way. This in itself was a puzzle. The world, if you let yourself consider it, was a puzzle in every plane of focus. Why was he so afraid of it?

Then the corollary: Why did he want to live?

Shortly before sleep, the answer came, at least to the corollary: he wanted to live so that he could solve a great problem.

—

ONE DAY, HE was in a teahouse with Cle when Biettermann walked in and gave her a kiss. This time, she didn’t deflect it. Then Biettermann sat down, and the three of them spent the morning chatting in the cramped chairs. From next door, old Jefferson Airplane vibrated the table. Biettermann nodded his chin to the beat, his hair bouncing over his eyes. “The pleasure we get from counting,” he mumbled, “without knowing we’re counting.”

“What’s that?” said Cle.

He glanced up. “Music.”

She laughed.

Milo shook his head. “Leibniz said that, Earl.”

“Indeed he did, my friend. Indeed he did.” He nodded at Milo. “Round one to you, I guess.”

Milo looked away.

For the rest of the morning, they sat in the rattan chairs talking about nothing. It was an activity Milo despised, but he wasn’t about to leave. At one point, Biettermann used an unfamiliar word. Then a few minutes later, just before he finally left for a class, he used it again.

As soon as he was gone, Milo said, “What the hell did that mean?”

“What did what mean?” said Cle.

“That pompous little word he kept bringing out.”

“Entheogen?”

He wrote it on a napkin.

“Look it up, Andret.” She winked at him.

“All right, I will.”

“Wait a second,” she said, leaning closer. “Wait a minute — that bothered you, too, didn’t it? Not to know a word that he knew.”

“I’m interested in knowledge.”

“Of course you are.”

Silence.

Now she was smiling. “And while you’re at it,” she said, “here’s another one for you. Theodicy. That’s another word Leibniz used. As long as you have the dictionary out, you might as well look ’em both up.” She sipped her tea. “He wrote a whole book about it, as a matter of fact.”

“All right,” he said. “I will. I like to learn.”

She leaned toward him, her hand grazing his leg. “By the way,” she said, “I like to learn, too.” She rubbed her lips along his cheek and stopped at his ear. “And in case you’re confused,” she whispered, “Earl’s got it backwards. He’s Leibniz. You’re Newton.”

—

THEN, ONE CHILLY night in December, a night during which he’d been forced to sit at a different desk — the room he normally worked in was being recarpeted — he became aware, briefly, of the presence of something. Some force or even some being just behind him. A charge in the air. For a moment he had the sensation that a net was about to be tightened around his arms. He fought it. By an act of discipline he was able not to turn his head.

—

OF COURSE THERE was nothing there. But now and again the idea would materialize without warning — a feeling on his shoulders.

He refused to turn.

If he did, if he gave in to the urge, he saw nothing, of course. Just the blank rows of study carrels and the line of storefronts down Euclid, colored by lights. They stretched to vanishing in the darkness.

He would face forward again and close his eyes. For a change of scene, he’d begun spending time in the main library instead of Evans. Still, there could be other mathematics students around. If Milo Andret’s eyes were open, the other students would notice. Milo Andret worked with his eyes closed . He was Hans Borland’s protégé. The savant.

At this point he was usually done for the evening.

Occasionally he would drop all pretense and just walk over to one of the big windows and stare out toward the bay. The air from that direction smelled of fog and turned the streetlights into rows of yellow moons. Sometimes this was enough; but usually, he would need to leave. To calm himself he would take a longer route home. The couples with their dogs. The rows of wooden bungalows lit by porch lamps. The orange-rind scent of the trees. All of it gathered by the steady beat of his step. At the apartment he would go immediately to his notebook, which was dense now with figures. In such straightforward work he could forget himself.

And thankfully, the night itself never failed to wash him. In the morning he would wake early and begin recording again. In the tradition of Copernicus or Leonardo, he was extrapolating from nothing but his own data. His perfect two-windowed view of the universe. Figures upon figures.

In their incremental intervals, he was certain now of what he was seeing: the recognizable proof of a harmony. The numbers in their perfect columns bearing him forward.

—

NOT LONG AFTER: another row of panes in Earl’s palm. It was early afternoon when he let Cle slip one onto his tongue. Hours later, when he came out from its hold, she was gone. So was Earl. It was different this time — there’d been no mathematics, no visit from his sources.

Still, he’d understood something.

The way she’d been visiting his apartment lately: every other afternoon.

Around him the room was dark. Thin coronas of light flaring the perimeters of the shades. Bodies on the rugs and couches. The upswell of the drug making him queasy. He recognized a girl from somewhere, rose and walked over and touched her on the shoulder.

By the time they were outside, they were arm in arm. The curve of her hips. His brain undone and the drug still not finished with him: colors swooping in his eye. Yellows from a line of hollyhocks, blocks away. The silver-green glitter of the bay. His focus leaping. Cle. This new girl next to him, her voice falling and rising. Block after block while the colors struck from a distance. Night had fallen before they tired, somewhere below the hills of Albany. A tiny bar, dark and quiet. Colors gone at last but the drug still skirmishing at the edges. A longshoreman’s place — iron stools and a jukebox. A hint of threat. Vodka for her, bourbon for him: a double.

Its woody bite touched his throat and brought back the world.

—

ALONE, LATER, HE woke in a strange bed. The room bright: morning. Gray snakes of incense twisting on the ceiling. Clothes on the floor — his own. Jeans, boots. A fringed leather jacket on a peg by the door. He looked away: not the kind of thing Cle wore.

Whoever she was, she’d left. The tossed sheets. The dent in the pillow. He looked around for a note. Then, through the window, he searched for a street sign.

It was infinitely strange not to know where he was.

He remembered nothing: this was the odd part. A hole in the world, starting in the bar. The street. The stairs. The heat of her beneath him. But before that, nothing.

He must be in the flats, he realized, somewhere near Gilman. He gathered his things and left.

Block after block of low houses, dogs barking behind chain-link. The vistas obscured. Finally, at a corner park, he caught sight of the water, and the world snapped back into place. Turning toward home, he tried to piece together what had happened.

THE THOUGHT EITHER woke him or came to him as he woke. The dark of night. He rose and checked the log-book again, inserted the month’s coordinates. Then he calculated.

Neatly, he wrote:

1. The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci.